How Facebook Is Going the Snapchat Discover Route to Make News *New*

It’s 2015 and our average media diet includes more than just plain text on a page. We’re talking photos, audio, video, GIFs galore all accessible with a scroll and a swipe. Following the lead of Snapchat Discover, Facebook is launching Instant Articles, a new interactive feature that brings stories to life. You know, kinda like what we’ve been up to with our tabletop DIY videos on the social platform ;)

Trying to revamp how you consume news the way it did with the Paper app, Facebook says the purpose behind Instant Articles is twofold; the first being a faster experience. According to Facebook’s blog, this new feature will cut the current content loading time (8 seconds) majorly. By establishing faster loading, users will be able to instantly experience a slew of interactive features faster minus the buffer. In addition to, you know… reading, you’ll be able to zoom in + out and explore HD photos within an article through a tilt of the phone, play videos automatically as you scroll through a story, explore interactive maps and listen to audio captions. Oh, and since this is Facebook and all, liking, commenting and sharing those pieces is a natural component as well.

The interactive feature is already available on Facebook’s iOS app and will launch soon on the Android version. Different from Snapchat Discover (which hosts all of this type of content via a landing page of 12 participating publishers), you’ll be able to see the new post formats in action on the pages of media companies Facebook has already teamed up with, like The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC News and The Atlantic.

With so much of our news stemming from the social network these days (about 30% of U.S. adults say they get their daily scoop from FB) it makes sense to have a news feed that’s actually providing you with news you want to see (sorry, Sally who just got engaged and/or had a baby). Don’t be afraid to click through though, folks — there is still good stuff happening *outside* of Facebook Land.

Are you excited for this new Facebook feature or do you think it will make your newsfeed more cluttered than it already feels? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.